


sometimes it stings, sometimes it burns

by stravaganza



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (which is code for "i started rambling and ran with it"), Based on a Tumblr Post, Family Dynamics, Fluff, Immortal Husbands, M/M, Not Beta Read, Sadposting, Wishful Thinking, introspective, loveposting, nicky may be a bit depressed but what immortal isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27191404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stravaganza/pseuds/stravaganza
Summary: And yet today, like 900 years ago, Nicolò can’t help but feel a deep ache in his bones, a longing so fierce he had to sit down on more than one occasion. Because of all the things he’s had with Joe, of all the lifetimes they have shared, there are so many things they could never give to each other.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 12
Kudos: 92





	sometimes it stings, sometimes it burns

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this tumblr [post](https://stravaganzawrites.tumblr.com/post/632954701031325696/need-me-a-tog-fic-where-nicky-is-upset-because-he)
> 
> (Don't look at this too closely or you'll notice it's two rants in a trenchcoat pretending to be a fanfiction)

It’s going to be one of those days.

Sometimes they still happen, and although they don’t hit Nicky the same way they did the first time, they’re still hard.

Like the first time Nicky realised that, no matter where they went, one of them (or both) would always be the odd man out, whether because of their ethnicity, nationality, or their religion; or the first time that, about 200 years after they decided to stop swinging their swords wildly at each other, he realised that he was _never_ going to be parted from this man and that the life he had drawn out for himself hadn’t just been delayed - it was never going to be possible at all; or even, one day in the early renaissance, the first time he realised that as beautiful and in love as they were, they could never let the world know, they could never have a painting of them commissioned to one of the many great artists around at the time, because what would they even do with it? They weren’t hoarders by nature, and even though by then they knew Andy and her Belgian stash, the world was still so vast to them it just seemed impossible, and impractical, and ridiculous.

And yet today, like 900 years ago, Nicolò can’t help but feel a deep ache in his bones, a longing so fierce he had to sit down on more than one occasion. Because of all the things he’s had with Joe, of all the lifetimes they have shared, there are so many things they could never give to each other.

They never got married. It had always felt pointless to the both of them. Even when they landed in places that didn’t care for their gender or when they found this or that religion or faith that would bless their union, they always knew it wasn’t going to mean much in the end. Their bond went beyond human comprehension, possibly beyond even their gods’, so why bother with some ridiculous ritual? The idea had struck them a few times, but they always ended up agreeing that it would feel like a charade.

They never had a family other than Andy, Lykon, Quynh, and later Booker and Nile. Those were the only people they wouldn’t be able to lose, the only people they could share everything with - and still they did lose half of them along the way, some more painfully than others. They hadn’t ever even met Lykon in person before he died, one day they just stopped dreaming about him (and they had still felt the loss far too keenly, because he had still been their companion until he suddenly wasn’t anymore); Quynh was there, and then she wasn’t, after they split up for a period to get away from Europe and its moral cleansing, and her absence still felt like a stone in Nicky’s chest, most days (if only they had convinced them to go with them... if only they’d tried harder); and of course, Booker’s betrayal still burns like bile at the back of Nicky’s throat whenever he thinks about it for too long (Joe would call it his Christian guilt, but he can’t help but wonder if they could have helped him with his loneliness, or worse, if they haven’t aggravated it simply by being together); and even though Nicky had never wanted a family for himself, not even _before_ , he knew Joe had wanted children at some point, somehow, but how could they ever accept that they would outlive them?

They never had a proper courtship, either. Of course, with every century and place they visited there’d be more rules, more traditions, more ways to ask for someone’s lifelong companionship that they could (and did) try out, because Joe was nothing if not a romantic, utterly in love with love, and Nicky was in love with him and loved indulging him: but it was different, wasn’t it, to write a poem to someone who already knew what it would say, and who already felt the same way (not to mean that it wasn’t nice to receive such declarations, or gifts, but Nicky had wondered more than once if Joe would have liked to be able to _seduce_ him and ask him to be his lifelong companion rather than being thrust together by fate from the get go).

He knows some of these doubts and regrets are irrational, but knowing that doesn’t make them any less hard on him.

Today, though, what weighed on his soul was something far more simple and yet never less devastating, no matter how much time passed. They had been returning from the pub, Booker’s “sentence” dealt with in a way that felt neither satisfying nor fair - not because he deserved worse, but because Nicky wished they wouldn’t have to let him go out in the world alone for so long; he’s _family_ \- when they had walked past an old man returning from the beach. Nicky had seen a flash of recognition in the man’s eyes, had noticed the way he had done a double take as they passed by, the confused sense of déjà-vu in the way he had stopped in his tracks.

They hadn’t. They had kept walking to their hotel, but Nicky had kept looking around, worried. It hasn’t been too long since the last time he and Joe have last spent time in Malta, clearly. They still aren’t used to the way life expectancy has grown in the past century alone, and they will have to remember to keep their visits more sporadic in the future, and doesn’t that just break Nicky’s heart all over again? To keep the one place that felt like _theirs_ even more at arm’s length?

He had never been able to give Joe a home, to build a place for them that would last; they had tried living outside of cities that just turned into metropolis, engulfing their long abandoned houses, they had tried mingling in cities big enough that faces got forgotten day by day but something always ended up pulling them away, and even in the place they kept returning to, time after time, they now have to be wary because people who were adults seventy years ago are still alive now to recognise them.

If only he had been able to give Joe a home, to build a place for their family to be _together_ , maybe this wouldn’t have happened. If they had never lost each other, perhaps now they wouldn’t be here, short of a brother and a sister.

“Nicolò?”

He feels Joe stir behind him and sighs. They’re too attuned for his beloved not to notice he’s already awake - and sad, at it.

“ _Sono qui_.”

“ _Ma ti sento distante_.”

Nicolò turns around to offer a small smile and a caress to Joe’s cheek. He shrugs and closes his eyes again.

“Which one is it?” Joe continues in Italian without missing a step. He knows all of Nicky’s moods better than his own.

“I wish things had been different. I wish we could have had a home to rest our wary bones and warier siblings. And... I wish I had provided you with a home, Yusuf. You know how ardently I long for it. For all the lifetimes that I’ve given you, I couldn’t give you something as simple as a place to put down roots.”

It isn’t the first time they talk about this; it surely won’t be the last. But Nicky knows that this time Joe shares more deeply in his sentiment, with all the shit that has gone down.

“I know you do, _habibi_. I know you would trade all your lives in a heartbeat so we could have a place to call our home, a way to leave a mark of our love in history. I know that if you could you’d swap places with those lovers they dig up, centuries dead and still stubbornly hanging to each other for all to see. But, _hayati_ , we are centuries _alive_ and still stubbornly clinging to each other. We left a mark, even though it’s not a monument to our bond, by touching lives and saving people we wouldn’t have been able to save on our own. And we did put down roots, even if they’re not deep in the ground, but rather in each other. There is no me without you anymore, and there is no you without me, either. Do you think I ever felt unmoored, like I didn’t belong, just because we never had four walls or a picture to hang over a fireplace?”

Nicky doesn’t interrupt his beloved’s flow, but shakes his head all the same, despite the rhetoric question, because he has to drive the point to himself that Joe is telling nothing but the truth, like he always has.

“I still wish some things could’ve been different. Normal. But you’re wrong.”

“Oh?” Joe asks, curious rather than surprised.

“I wouldn’t trade a single moment of our existence together. If we had normal, we would curse God for making our time together so short. I just...” a sigh, weary and exhausted. “I don’t even know what I wish for anymore. I want to build something everlasting, but what does that even mean?” Joe tightens his arms around him and leans in to press a kiss right below his eye. “I want to give you the world, Yusuf, and everything in it.”

Joe’s chuckle is a warm rumble that usually melts away all of Nicky’s worries, but today they cling a bit harder than usual. The way Joe cradles Nicky’s face in his hands and tilts it up gently helps, though.

“Don’t you see, Nicky? _You’re_ the world. And, like a wise man once said, the world is my home.”

“Ah... well, when you put it like that.”

The way Joe’s eyes crinkled in the grey morning light and the way he leans in to kiss him make Nicky sigh again.

While his worries may not be leaving him alone today, Nicky at least is reminded of how Joe feels.

He understands the sentiment all too well.

**Author's Note:**

> “Sono qui.”  
> “Ma ti sento distante.”  
> -  
> "I'm here."  
> "But I feel you're far away."
> 
> The Lykon thing is based on the comics! There it's stated that he died fighting during the Italian city-states wars, which were around 1200ish, and so in this work Nicky and Joe never got to meet him, but he died after they became immortals, hence why they still dreamt him.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this! Come find me on tumblr for more low quality rambling


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